Hi everyone. I have been in the hobby now for about a year and yesterday I had bad experience that I’d like to get your reaction to:

I was flying my BTE Venture 60 (first kit), pulling out of a large loop I heard a loud buzz that lasted lasted for a second or two. I then lost elevator control and crashed, destroying the plane and damaging the engine.

After inspecting the wreckage I found that the elevator servo’s gears were completely stripped which was why I had lost elevator control.

My guesss is that the elevator developed ‘flutter’ which stripped the servo’s gears which, in turn, left me with no control over the elevator.

When I built the plane I was aware of the possibility of flutter problems as I had read one or two internet postings from people who lost their Venture 60s to this. To minimize slop I located the elevator servo on the aft of the fuselage and connected it to the control horn with a heavier gauge control rod than was included with the kit.

I called Bruce Tharpe who designed and kits the aiplane. Bruce told me he had heard of only two or three instances of this happening with the Venture 60 kit. He suggested that adding a second control horn to the other side of the elevator might reduce the possibility of flutter, He also graciously offered to sell me another kit at half price if I was interested in building another one.

So here’s my question: Should I build another? One the one hand I loved the way it built and flew (all 4 flights) right up to the moment of impact (actually about 10 seconds before impact is when I stopped enjoying things…).

On the other hand it makes me nervous to think of investing all that money, time and effort again not knowing that the flaw that caused the flutter (whatever it is) has been fixed. Right now I have no idea of what to do differently next time around.

What would you do if you were me?

Second, can you give me any idea of what might have cause the elevator flutter?